Changes to Warren County’s subdivision ordinance will wait until those in other counties are studied, supervisors said Monday.

Meeting informally, most of the Board of Supervisors favored stronger language on lot sales but gave engineers until after Nov. 19 to draft a formal plan so they could contact more counties on which to model it.

A public hearing date must be set to change any part of an ordinance.

The push to alter the ordinance came earlier this month after supervisors agreed to cut credit line amounts needed on warranties on roads in two subdivisions.

Specifically, supervisors favored bans on residential lot sales until roads are dedicated for county maintenance.

“They’ll have to build it and turn it over to the county with a letter of credit in place,” said county engineer John McKee, adding developers might need to approach starting development of a subdivision differently. “It may mean they do a smaller section in phase one. Instead of 30 lots, they may do 10.”

Current regulations, adopted in 2004, call for road and drainage drawings to be presented to the county so roads can be maintained by the Warren County Road Department. Discussions of changing those regulations have been on the table nearly ever since.

District 1 Supervisor John Arnold pushed hardest for the additional time to study other counties.

“I would rather we talk to these other (counties),” Arnold said. “I still rather we do more research on it before we do change it.”

Earlier this month, McKee cited advice from Central Mississippi Planning and Development District and Rankin County to beef up Warren County’s development regulations.

On Monday, Arnold said he had contacted supervisors in Lee County and sought information from other localities where development growth matched Warren County’s closer than Rankin, though no statistics were cited during the discussion.

Lee County’s population grew by more than 7,000 in the 2010 Census; Warren County’s dropped by nearly 900.

Recent agreements on letters of credit involved Littlewood and Twin Creeks subdivisions, both off Lee Road. Supervisors moved to lower their requested credit line for Madison Ridge Road, the main access into Littlewood, by 70 percent. The board held off on a formal vote to discount a credit letter for Twin Creeks Road by 63 percent until developers perform small-scale repairs in Camden Place, off Oak Ridge Road.

Roads in none of the three subdivisions have been accepted for county maintenance.